Bluffing the 8-year-old
Anyone who read my recent column about my love of weddings and loathing of skiing (and Logan feeling the complete opposite) will be amused at the irony that last week we took the whole family on a road trip down to Utah so we could do both.
I again proved that I can’t be trusted on a ski hill when, fresh off the chair lift on our first run, I immediately and very accidentally led half of our family down a black diamond slope.
After a few rounds of complaints and exclamations of “I think we’re gonna die”, we all zig-zagged our way down and made it to the bottom just fine—except for eight-year-old Hyrum, who balked halfway down and absolutely refused to budge.
Hyrum has a bit of a stubborn streak, so those of us at the bottom of the hill were all gearing up for a long wait.
“It wasn’t that bad, buddy!” I yelled up to him. “None of us even cried! You can do this!”
It was to no avail. Hyrum lay down on his side (really the only way you can lie down when there are skis attached to your body) while Logan stayed with him and tried to cajole or bribe him into going down the hill.
Finally, Logan hoisted Hyrum over his shoulder—skis and all—and proceeded to snowboard with him down the rest of the hill while we all cheered in gratitude.
“That saved us at least three hours,” Emmett said, and he was most definitely right.
The rest of our trip was a mixture of fun, exhaustion, and utter chaos, which is exactly what I expected, although I thought it would be on a slightly smaller scale. Besides skiing, we went to the wedding and reception, visited our daughter Lucy on her college campus, wandered through the school bookstore, and went with 20 cousins and their parents to an indoor recreation center with a huge pool.
It was after a couple hours of swimming at that recreation center that we had another run-in with Hyrum’s delightfully lovable stubborn streak. We had an event to get to—one for which we had to be fully dressed in our Sunday best—and Hyrum was absolutely adamant that he was not yet ready to leave.
Already worn out by the aforementioned wedding weekend activities, I was not in a state of mind to negotiate with my little terrorist. He was just gearing up to really put his foot down about not leaving under any circumstances when I spotted a buff and rather intimidating-looking man heading towards the locker room. And that’s when some devious mom inspiration struck.
“Well, the rest of us have to go, and I can’t leave you here alone, so I’ll go ask that man over there if he can babysit you while we’re gone.” I motioned in the direction of the man, and Hyrum caught a glimpse of him just as he entered the locker room.
His eyes got wide. “No, it’s okay, I’ll go with you,” he said quickly.
“No, no, I don’t want to make you leave the pool early when you’re having such a good time,” I said, standing up and heading towards the locker room. “Let me just double check with him that it’s okay if you hang out with him until we get back.”
“I’ll go with you. I totally want to go with you,” Hyrum said definitively.
“No complaining?” I asked.
“No complaining,” he confirmed. He was extremely compliant from that point on. It was a miracle.
Now, I know what some of you may be thinking, that bluffing your eight-year-old into thinking you’re going to let a complete stranger babysit him at the pool is not exactly good parenting.
“What messages are you sending him?” you ask. “Wouldn’t a little love and logic go a long way?”
But you drive in a car for 10 hours with five kids and ski gear up to your eyeballs, then drag everyone through a wedding, reception, two bad night’s sleep and a few hours at an insanely crowded recreation center pool, and then tell me that you wouldn’t have done the same.
Love and logic is good and all, but sometimes you have to use a little bluff and carry.